Clarify whether the draft is intended to describe how existing federations work, or to provide a recommended standard approach

[MartinFSmith]

The draft is unclear as to whether it is based on collected actual practices of operational identity federations, or whether it is proposing a standard approach (that may or may not be implemented anywhere currently.)

For example, this text from the draft seems to imply that existing federations have defined federated identity management -- "communities and organizations that share a common user base and transaction type have built the means to allow users to sign on and access multiple services through common login and authentication processes. This is known as federated identity management." But later on the draft discusses the possibility of a broad identity ecosystem, bound neither by pre-existing community affiliation nor by common transaction type (whatever that is. )

I suggest the best approach would be to state that the practices of existing federations have been examined and taken as input, but that this document is proposing a complete and coherent high-level structure and standard vocabulary/ontology for trust frameworks (that may or may not be found in any operating identity framework.)